You may have already submitted your green card application to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). However, with only a small percentage of applications being approved per year, you may already assume that your chances are slim to none. You may still try your luck with entering the diversity visa lottery. Without further ado, please read on to discover more about the diversity visa lottery and how a seasoned green card lawyer in Milwaukee, WI, at Sesini Law Group, S.C., can help you enter it.
What should I know about the diversity visa lottery?
Essentially, the diversity visa lottery is an annual program offered by the United States Department of State where an extra 55,000 immigrants are granted access to enter the country on an immigrant visa. This program is otherwise known as the green card lottery. Specifically, this lottery is designated for individuals who are citizens of countries with low immigration rates in the United States. Of this group, eligible individuals must also have graduated from high school or its equivalent, or have qualified work experience, in their home countries.
With that being said, the list of countries with low immigration rates in the United States varies from year to year. Therefore, the list of countries eligible for this lottery varies from year to year. Now, natives from the following countries are, unfortunately, ineligible for the 2025 lottery:
- Bangladesh.
- Brazil.
- Canada.
- The People’s Republic of China (plus mainland- and Hong Kong-born natives).
- Columbia.
- Dominican Republic.
- El Salvador.
- Haiti.
- Honduras.
- India.
- Jamaica.
- Mexico.
- Nigeria.
- Pakistan.
- The Philippines.
- Republic of Korea.
- Venezuela.
- Vietnam.
What if I win the diversity visa lottery while in the United States?
Every year, some diversity visa lottery winners already reside legally in the United States; whether it be because they are on a nonimmigrant status or some other legal status. If this is your case, your process of obtaining a green card may look different. That is, you may have to submit an adjustment of status application with the USCIS. With this, your adjustment of status process must be completed by September 30 of the 2025 fiscal year. Your lottery winning cannot be carried over to the next fiscal year.
This process may contrast with that if you still reside outside the country at the time of your lottery win. This is because you would have had to go through consular processing with the United States Department of State to be issued an immigrant visa. Evidently, consular processing is a whole other animal, so to speak.
This blog is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to immigration laws in the United States. So for more information, please reach out to a competent family immigration lawyer in Milwaukee, WI, from Sesini Law Group, S.C., today.